The Doff system has really got me hooked. I'm logging in twice a days just to update my doff status and assign new missions!

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what is Doff???

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"Duty Officer" <-- Of the new "Duty Officer System" being tested on the F2P Tribble test server.

As far as the F2P changes do - With what they are testing/planing for Crafting; IF those changes go live when F2P launches, they might as well just remove Crafting from the game as the fact that IN ADDITION to farming Anomalies; they ALSO require you to pay a Refined Dilithium cost to craft the actual item - it'll have the EXACT same result.

What people reject most about dilithium as a crafting material is the fact, that is is non tradeble. So you can't pool resources from different characters. Not from your own account, and certainly not from other people like fleet mates.
Every dedicated fleet crafter who was lending his expertise to mates who provided pooled materials are now "unemployed".
And the fleet members (not an issue with our fleet, as we don't have a dedicated crafter really).

But I myself only have a single character dedicated to crafting.
I certainly won't be able to grind all the stuff for for all my characters now. It's physically impossible to do it for 8-9 toons.
Even for 2-3 would suck every bit of fun out of the game as you would spend every single minute in the game for months on end to gather the materials and do nothing else.

Everyone who is ok with that should really look for a life...

Same goes for the new STFs. For some those missions were a pain to do because they were long and difficult if you didn't know what you were doing.
But the new abbreviated versions have degraded to a shoot-em up you have to repeat ad nauseum to have an alternative way to decent gear. And gear is the only motivativation people could possibly have for these in the eyes of teh devs it seems. Which is ridiculous. There is no more feel of a difficult team event when you do them.
I have not done the Elite versions yet, but from what I hear, they are more of the same, just really frustratingly difficult (meaning, overpowered Borg enemies who regularly on.e shoot the players no matter what gear and powers they bring)
I did a handful of runs I and I got one piece of Borg salvage on average out of it.
You need at least 20 for a single ground weapon.
Calculate yourself how many repeats it would take to outfit you ground characters and your complete ship... don't even start on your Bridge Crew....
And then alternate toons...

Except about 15,000 per ship weapon when you can only refine 8,000 a day still equals a grind.

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Is having to play the game to advance really a grind?

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Yes when it involves having to scan anamolies and hope you get a rare trace and THEN have to get a large amount of dilithium WHICH TAKES A MONTH JUST FOR YOUR SHIP AT VA. I'm not a hardcore gamer and I don't have that kind of time BECAUSE I HAVE A LIFE, and I don't have so much money to buying dilithium from people is an attractive option so yes IT'S a grind. And thats not even factoring in having to unlock the ability to craft items.

Yes when it involves having to scan anamolies and hope you get a rare trace and THEN have to get a large amount of dilithium WHICH TAKES A MONTH JUST FOR YOUR SHIP AT VA.

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You're looking at this in the "I'm already at VA" vacuum. Unless you spend all your dilithium re-outfitting your ship at every level to the maximum possible, this will really be "when you get to VA, you'll have all the dilithium you need".

Meanwhile your existing VA character is already pretty well outfitted.

It's not like the day this launches, we all find ourselves sitting on VA characters with no gear.

The way they keep nerfing weapons, though, it IS kinda like that. My main character's weapon, for example, i spent a lot of time grinding to get the points for. After they releveled things, it's underpowered enough that I gave it to a bridge officer that doesn't see the ground very often. Would I be shocked if they 'tweaked' things a bit more so that the stuff we had wasn't as good as the stuff we could now buy on the C-Store? Not in the least; in fact, I'm expecting it.

For starters, though, I'd love if someone got off their ass and put something back in for the 500 Day veteran award. They took away the biggest piece of the award (in September) because it might screw things up a little, possibly, if it still existed in December (or January, or March, or whenever they get around to relaunching this thing), promised they'd replace it with something else 'cool', and so far, nada. I missed the old reward by about 30 days, and there's no action taken on the replacement. Sure, people are busy with getting the F2P ready, I guess, but can't tell me this is much of a programming task, unless the coders are completely incompetent. How about we start there? Since apparently things like new content are out of the question, how about at least throwing a bone to the people who've been paying their subscription fees (while receiving no new content) to apparently just fund the F2P conversion? Seems like keeping the few loyal people left somewhat content, or at least not flipping them off, would be a no brainer, but apparently not. If they can't treat their customers a little better, not gonna be a lot of people still around when the F2P model eventually gets launched. 6 month hiatus for a game that's only been around for close to 2 years seems like a dumb move in the first place, but what do I know? Just know I'm losing patience, and the KOTOR game is sounding better and better...

Unless you spend all your dilithium re-outfitting your ship at every level to the maximum possible,

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Actually it was using ECs to get white common versions of even mk gear WHICH I CAN'T AFTER F2P GOES LIVE, and using the exchange to cover what the vedors don't have becuase I don't want to worry about what gear I have while playing the damn game.

Or do you think they stuff we start out with works all the way to endgame.

I like story progression not wasting my time just getting equipment I will trade or conver to ECs when I'm done with it so I can get the new stuff.

To put it short: EVERYTHING in teh game just becomes a means to get a tiny bit of dilithium every day which you need huge amounts of to get anything for it.
It used to be, currency was the means to play the CONTENT!
It's totally backwards.

Cryptic does it like this to get you to log back in every day.
Get your Dilithium, get your dilithium...

Instead of Play our Content, play our Content...

That's why it's a grind and it becomes meaning less if that is ALL you do!

Oh and now looks like pets are per character even the ones you got from tribble testing and on top of this it was done in a patch with no release notes.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE!?

Are they trying to kill the game?

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I don't know. It's a lot of small things that add up to quite a lot by now.
It's okay to monetize things and make a profit. But when has Cryptic forgotten to do that with stuff we want and gladly bought?

I ust admit, I have no defense for them left in me at this point.

I still try to get as much enjoyment out of the game as possible.
But every day has more bad news again and again.

On the STO forum the only dev responses for weeks now involve the DOFF system, which is about the only thing they did right lately... and it was teh one thing I wasn't even remotely interested in before they introduced it on Tribble.

Oh and now looks like pets are per character even the ones you got from tribble testing and on top of this it was done in a patch with no release notes.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE!?

Are they trying to kill the game?

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I don't know. It's a lot of small things that add up to quite a lot by now.
It's okay to monetize things and make a profit. But when has Cryptic forgotten to do that with stuff we want and gladly bought?

I ust admit, I have no defense for them left in me at this point.

I still try to get as much enjoyment out of the game as possible.

But every day has more bad news again and again.

On the STO forum the only dev responses for weeks now involve the DOFF system, which is about the only thing they did right lately... and it was teh one thing I wasn't even remotely interested in before they introduced it on Tribble.

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Yeah the Doff system is cool and the option to skip the tutorial and start at the academy if you've already done it is kind of fun and a time save plus it let's me get to things a mail a new alt quicker, and I like how easy it is to promote and retrain BOs with the changes they made there as well as all the things I can use ECs for, but the dilithium in crafting and this possible C-store change as well as the lack of communication from the Devs is pissing me off.

The thing is if they had left dilithium out of crafting and still let me buy white common even ranked items I wouldn't have as much of a problem with most of the changes.

I am beginning to get very concerned about the proliferation of Dilithium in the game. It now seems like if you want to do anything you have to pay dilithium and grind to get it.

Cryptic seem to be of the opinion that every spare moment we have should be spent in the game trying to earn dilithium and I really don't have the time. At the moment I won't spend any until I reach VA.